


somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond

by venus_in_red



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 06:18:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5817352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venus_in_red/pseuds/venus_in_red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey and Poe are assigned an enigmatic, top-secret mission by General Leia Organa: take the severely injured Kylo Ren from the doomed Starkiller base and keep him prisoner on Jakku. As Poe is forced to leave Rey to help the Resistance figure out the map leading to Luke, Rey finds herself face to face again with the galaxy's worst enemy. As the days pass, Rey starts experiencing conflicting feelings towards the man she's holding hostage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Note that I'm a native English speaker. Sorry if the grammar sounds a bit off sometimes!

Has somebody ever been inside your head? Well, I’ll tell you what it’s like: it’s like somebody’s spying on you, like somebody’s lurking in the darkness, watching you while you walk home. You can’t see them, but you can feel them. It’s like you’ve been stripped naked in the cold, and an audience is watching you while you writhe and try to hide. There’s nothing good about that feeling. Especially when the person inside your head is a heartless murderer.

That’s how I felt when he got inside my head. He raised his hand and placed it in front of my face while I stared at him with wide eyes. At first, nothing happened. His hand shook a little, as if he was focusing all his strength on his arm muscles. What was he grabbing at? Then, I felt it. It was as if a different consciousness had made its way into mine. It’s like a different person was now sharing my body and mind. It starts with a jolt. Then comes the ringing in your ears. A sound that feels as if you’re standing in the middle of a wave about to hit the shore. Or in the eye of a storm. You know you won’t be conscious much longer. You know you’ll soon pass out, convulse, scream a guttural scream that comes from your soul and not your throat. And then there’s silence. The heaviest silence you’ll ever experience. A fog that dissipates. At first you’re relieved it’s over, but then you see it. It lurks in the darkness of your soul like something that crawls in old attics and unused basements, something that’s not hiding yet doesn’t fancy being seen. It lingers, gets on its feet, dares to take a few steps, and then roams the room fearlessly, taking in every detail. And that’s when you are no longer alone in your head.

When he did it to me, I figured out what he was doing quite quickly. You don’t have your mind probed every other day, but when you do, you can somehow _feel_ _it_. My eyes were shut with the strain of trying to keep _it_ out – but how does one stop something like this? I try to think of meaningless things, to try and distract _its_ attention from what matters. I think of sand, I think of making castles in the sand, I think of metal scraps and of how my boots can be so uncomfortable when they’re wet and muddy. It might work for a while. But then you feel _it_ , _it_ sinks deeper into you like water soon sinks and runs through fabric.

I know he can see it. He can see beyond the sand. He can see the sandcastles being destroyed. He can see me exchanging the metal scraps for food and he can see how they’re never enough. He can see that he muddy boots can’t be replaced because they’re then only ones I own. He can see the void, he can see my hands that reach out and grasp the think blankets at night, he can see me holding both hands together trying to think it’s somebody else’s hand I’m holding. He can see… he can see things I can’t even see myself.

Then there’s a snap. Like an elastic that was pulled too far and broke, hitting back whoever was holding. My eyes are suddenly wide open – _when did I open them_? _–_ and to my surprise and horror, I am looking at two big, dark, very human eyes.

Kylo Ren’s eyes.

When did he take that helmet off? He must have, at some point. At some point, when I was out and he was inside my head. The hand that still hoovers above me is bare too. When did he take his glove off? For a brief moment, so brief I can’t say it really happened, he looks horrified and surprised, himself.

His eyes are human, like the face that glares at me. He mutters something under his breath, something angry, and his hand trembles like he’s straining to grasp at something outside his reach. His eyes are human, but there’s a shadow lingering behind them that isn’t so. His eyes are human but they keep getting bigger and bigger until I scream and try to grasp my restraints, because I’m sure I’m falling into them.

And I do.

I fall into his eyes like one would fall into a well, except twice, at the same time. There’s a dark room inside them and there stands a solitary man. He writhes and shivers on the floor, his spine arches at an unnatural angle as he screams in agony, yet I can’t hear him. He screams again and again and his hand keeps reaching up at the ceiling, knuckles white and straining. I want to enter the room and end his agony, I want to free him with a cut of the knife I grasp in my hand but there are metal bars between us. He looks at me but his eyes are no longer human.

And it all goes out in one snap again.

This time, I’m sure the horror and surprise in his eyes is real.


	2. Through the sand

It wasn’t my idea to fly back to Jakku. It was Poe who insisted it would be the best thing to do. But it wasn’t Poe who thought it would be a good idea to bring the galaxy’s worst enemy along. I would have left him to bleed his life out in the snow or to blow up with his base. It was General Organa who told us to do otherwise. She didn’t explain why, she just said she wanted us to bring back Kylo Ren. And there was such sadness and anguish in her voice, we did so without further questioning. He was unbelievably heavy when unresponsive and it took two, Poe and I, to lift him up and hastily throw him in the Falcon’s cargo compartment before we set off at light speed. Quite literally.

We tied his hands, just in case, but none of us bothered to survey the damage he had sustained. The General sure had her reasons to demand the most reckless murderer in the known universe be brought to her. However, Poe and I secretly hoped he wouldn’t make it. Poe went downstairs briefly when he reached cruise speed and confirmed that he was still breathing. I went downstairs an hour later but didn’t dare to look too closely at the black lump that lay motionless on the floor.

We were supposed to head back to the Resistance base, but the General ordered we’d instead keep Ren somewhere less predictable, in case the First Order came looking for him. Leia Organa herself promised she would then come and deal with the prisoner herself. Poe looked at me and shrugged. We both wondered why Leia would be so precautions with him. If she was counting on Kylo Ren to provide useful information on the First Order under a little pressure from her, she would soon realize what a bad plan that was. But once again, we took her orders in silence. Poe suggested we fly him to Jakku, where only scavengers and outdated, damaged droits roam about. It would be the last place anyone would think of looking for their lost dark master.

We landed in Jakku at sunset Poe reconfirmed the prisoner was breathing. I asked him to cover his face with something so I wouldn’t have to look at it while he carried him to my old AT-AT. Not that I was afraid of looking into his hateful eyes again. I was afraid of what I might see if I were to see him with them closed. Poe pulled his black headscarf over his head in silence, almost with respect. It looked as if he was throwing a shroud over a dead man’s face. When he dragged him out of the Falcon, the so-feared Kylo Ren was but a black lump under robes and scarves. Poe took him by the arms, while I grabbed his feet. We weren’t far from my makeshift home – or what had been my makeshift home for almost fifteen years – yet it felt like a walk of a thousand miles. Under the black fabric, the man himself was tall, almost inhumanly tall. Blood kept dripping from his clothes, leaving a red trail in the sand. There was still something about him, though. Something wrong with what we were doing. It didn’t feel right to carry a monster like him to shelter. It didn’t feel right to have my hands carry long legs and feet clad in black leather boots, still shiny, even if wet from the snow. Snow. It was odd to think of snow in a planet like Jakku.

Poe dropped him inside the AT-AT and ran to update the Resistance through the Falcon’s transponder. I waited for him to come back, nervously. I didn’t feel like standing there, alone with a sleeping tiger. But it took Poe a while to tune the transponder and reach General Organa. The latter was careful about this operation and insisted a specific frequency code be used to deal with updates concerning this whole mission. She didn’t want the rest of the Resistance to know we were in possession of one of the enemy’s most precious puzzle pieces. I waited a few minutes for Poe, but when he didn’t come, I dared step closer.

A puddle of blood was forming on the ground, around his midsection. I didn’t remember hitting him there, but I do remember seeing him limp towards me before he fell. Maybe he was wounded before I even tried to fight him. It made sense. I wouldn’t be alive, otherwise. I noticed there was not a grain of sand on his black robes, even if we had dragged him in the sand for a few minutes. He lay motionless, completely silent, slightly propped up against a wall. His chest rose and fell at odd intervals but you had to squint to notice.

I resisted the urge to remove the scarf that covered his face, but it got the best of me. Curiosity was stronger than fear. Very slowly, as if I was afraid to wake up a beast, I lifted it and dropped it to my side. There it was again, the face that had looked back at me in anger, in hatred, in disdain, only a few hours ago. Except now he was unconscious, his skin pale and sallow from massive blood loss. There was a cut between his eyes though I couldn’t tell how deep it was. A wound inflicted by my very hands – and suddenly I felt proud of myself.

«Rey! », Poe’s voice interrupted my train of thought. «I have to go back to the base. The General needs me right away. »

«What?! Are you leaving me alone with… this? », I yelled back.

«I’ll help you tie him up. We’ll chain him to the wall. Tied up and without his lightsaber he can’t do much. »

«Are you serious?! He can kill with just a flick of his hand! »

Poe took a step forward and put his hands on my shoulders. Only then I noticed how tired he looked. «He’s badly wounded. I don’t know if he’ll make it through the night, let alone pull any tricks on you using his powers. » He paused and looked at the setting sun. «And we don’t really have a choice. General Organa wants this mission to remain top secret. Only you and I know of this. »

«You can’t just leave me here, with him. Not like this. »

«Leia needs me. She needs my help figuring out the map. We need to get there before the others do… before what’s left of the others do--- »

«What’s the General’s deal? » I snapped, foreseeing a sleepless night after the longest day of my life. «Why did we have save this bastard? Why did we have to drag him out of his base and through the dunes to hide him in a--- »

The look on Poe’s face silenced me. He took a deep breath and clutched my shoulders again. Then, in a soft voice, he whispered.

«He’s her son. »


End file.
